


the light by memory (all and only)

by sybilius



Series: inclined; unbound; chosen. [2]
Category: Disco Elysium (Video Game)
Genre: Affection, Amnesia, Canon-Noncompliant Kineema, Coping, Dermatillomania (Skin picking), Domestic Abuse (Past), Driving, Emotional Conversations, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Non-Explicit Sex, POV Second Person, Protective!Kim, Scars, Smoking, Stargazing, Transferrence, jeangst, now with more Harry related agony!, pre mart harry bad bad man, protective!jean, that's the dynamic!!!, this is like. the romantic followup to my last fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:49:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29737599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sybilius/pseuds/sybilius
Summary: There's the man Harry was, and there's what you have now.Then, there's the fact that neither him, nor Kitsuragi remembers that man. For you, sometimes that makes it easier.
Relationships: Harry Du Bois/Kim Kitsuragi/Jean Vicquemare, Kim Kitsuragi/Jean Vicquemare
Series: inclined; unbound; chosen. [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2185641
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	the light by memory (all and only)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there. This is a...calming fic with serious content, I'd say? Mind the tags. This fic is, much like "we were near as stars" a bit of a love letter to the dynamic that nicpic/circo write so lovingly about. It's not inspired by any particular work of theirs but I do recommend "Old Flowers, Fresh Wounds" most of all as something I was thinking a lot about while writing this fic. 
> 
> I'll also link a gorgeous picture that was the other reason I wrote the fic. Setting....

You’re on the road again; midnight. Not for work, at least. It’s well past the time any reasonable police officer would be working, and even the unreasonable ones. The shitkid used to call it at quarter to the Belven hour, turning in with a bottle of vodka or a careless dose of diazepam. 

Not that you could call that memory him anymore. 

Nor that it’s him beside you. 

You adjust the steering levers, casting a glance to Kitsuragi warily. It was -- a planned drive, more or less. He’d called in the evening, said the case would take him a few hours but that if you were willing to go for a drive after, that he’d like the company. 

You know enough by now to ask if he wants you to drive. To know what it means when he says yes. 

The streetlights start to peter off. He’d pointed you in the direction of Old South. In a few kilometers, there will be a place to stop, somewhere you have before. 

You’d wanted to see him; maybe not so much like this. All knotted-hands, thin-lips. Might be work that’s chewing on him bad. Might be the rest of it. Might even be the shitkid himself, hell, the three of you all scrape each other raw like sandpaper from time to time.

You ease the brakes on, flick the headlamps off so that nothing but the half-light from the dash remains. Out of the darkness a warm hand finds the pulse point on your wrist. His fingers reach for your cheek, splaying out across your lips. The sharp gust of your breath travels to him. 

“Back seat?” you ask carefully.

He nods.

When he touches you, his hands wander along the edges of a years-old scar, and goddamnit, you shiver. Ancient fucking history over a dead man’s grave.

For some meanings of “dead”, you figure. 

After the sweat has dried and you’re blindly reaching on the car floor for discarded clothing, you catch his gaze lingering on the scar. Rather than asking, you throw him his jacket and hurry to button up your shirt. 

You get out of the car, the cool night air singing on your skin. He walks in step with you to the side of the Kineema, and you lean against the cool metal and glass of the rear window. He perches on the wheel, close enough to touch. The smell of rotting leaves by the roadside drifts by, so different from the ever-present exhaust of the city. 

You light a cigarette. By now, your eyes have adjusted to the darkness, taking in what little light they can from the edge of the city. You watch the edges of his nose twitch in as he takes in the second-hand nicotine. You suppose he's already had his _one._

“How much worse does it make it?”

“Make…?”

You gesture with the cigarette, “The cravings.”

“Hmm. Much worse.”

“I won’t offer it to you, then,” you lean over and kiss him on the lips, brushing at his cheekbones with your thumb. He kisses -- but still surgically careful, still on twelve layers of holding everything back. It's fucking amazing he can keep that up through sex, some of the time. 

Just one of many things about him that amaze you. Good, bad, hell knows. 

“You want to talk about what this is about?”

“I appreciate the offer,” yeah, that’s the Kitsuragi you know. 

You let it settle for a moment, see if he’s going to speak before you press him, “That wasn’t much of an answer.”

He just shakes his head. So either he'll come out with it before you drive out, or maybe you’ll never know. Both about equally likely. You take a searing drag of your cigarette. If he hadn’t insisted several times over in moments, sobering and joyous alike, that your words helped, you’d never believe him. 

Guess that’s why his words help. 

In the distance, Jamrock shimmers, the bright lights twinkling into rainbows along the roadside. You remember flipping through books about Katla, seeing glossy photographs of the twisting and shimmering Northern Lights. This isn’t the same, of course-- but it evokes a certain something. 

You point to a patch of sky apart from the city’s brightness, three stars in a line like soldiers. “Can you see that?” 

You know his relationship with vision is complex -- that his glasses are meant to correct a blurriness close by, and at a distance, distortions. They don’t usually catch the second thing, which fucks with his ability to shoot more than anything else. 

“The three stars?”

“Part of Ovre’s Huntsman,” you nod. He nods back. There’s something about the stars. All that light, some of it from stars thousands of years dead, only now reaching you. Too far away for the Pale to touch, you’ve always thought. That’s why it’s easy to focus on them. After a few more silent minutes, you stub out what's left of the cigarette. Might be time to drive back. 

He catches your arm, urgency in the grip of his bare fingers. You meet his eyes. 

“Will you forgive me if I say something I have no right to?” he presses his lips white, shaking his head, “That’s ridiculous. You don’t know what I’m asking, I --”

“Say it, Kits.” 

You watch him shake his head in the half-light, the breath of a laugh crinkling his nose, “I would hate it if anyone else called me that. But it’s -- from you, therefore…”

“That what I’m supposed to forgive you for?” you say, half-joking. His expression melts back to seriousness.

“No. No. What I keep thinking -- I try not to say it, but nights like this, I wonder it near-constantly. Why is it that you’re not angry? Jean, I see the scar, and I --”

“Oh.”

You swallow into the silence that rises between you. He needs to say this. Maybe you need to hear it. 

It would have been two weeks gone, the shitkid had -- that thread tugged on, unraveled from the mangled knot of his memories before Martinaise. Least it wasn’t during sex, just a casual moment in the evening. You throwing off your shirt, catching his eye with a grin -- then his glance slid over your body and something… *clicked*. 

Broken glass, he remembered. He remembered the way you'd crumpled across the linoleum, just another piece of trash tossed onto the pile. Yeah. You remember. 

You told yourself you gave as good as you got that night -- one of four bad nights, hey, at least you can count them on one hand. 

Harry remembered that you'd gotten stitches together that night, you pointed out the scar on his back. Kitchen counter. 

And worst yet, the shitkid fucking remembered he had tried to make *you* say you were fucking sorry. After. 

And he cried. You didn’t know how to take that -- numb and stupid with your shirt on the floor. Did it matter anymore? What would it cost if you really asked yourself that?

You asked Harry to drop it. Kim backed you. Thank god it was the three of you that night; the shock would have given way to something black and hollowing if you’d needed to soothe him. 

The soothing came a few nights later, him for you, you for him. Just enough words to keep the ghosts at bay. It’s all right. The memories are going to fucking *stay* memories. Harry promised that too. 

You start back to now, Kim’s gaze intent on you, “Sorry, I cut you off. Keep talking.”

“No, I...don’t think I should.”

“Look, Kits, if you’re worried, you’re not going to change my mind about him,” you sigh, your fingernails finding a stray scab on your face to dig into. A horrible thought comes to your lips unbidden, “But have *you* changed your mind?”

“I haven’t,” he says firmly, and squeezes your arm when you breathe your relief. 

Kim looks to the sky, his eyes distant, “I know that Harry isn’t -- *him*, not the man that left that mark on you. But the fact remains. When we drive together, sometimes I think about that, and I ask myself if I should turn back.”

“You’re not serious. You couldn’t lea--”

“Of course not. But I still -- mmf,” he cuts himself off, shaking his head, “I think it. I’ve been trying not to.”

Discomfort folds over you, suffocating and unfamiliar. Unfamiliar coming from him. You turn your eyes up to the sky, searching for the comfort of those distant pinpricks of light. One, two, three. You’ve been lucky, you realize. Most days the things he thinks, the things he needs -- they just pass right through you. This is ... it’s about you, and it isn’t. Damn bad enough not knowing what he needs, there’s that sinking feeling that maybe you can’t give it to him. 

“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” he murmurs. You can feel him watching you very closely. 

“No, I asked. I said so.”

“You didn’t know. I might have given you better warning."

“I still want to know. It’s from you.”

He clasps a calloused hand gently around your wrist. You tug him closer, just by inches -- and he folds into you, slow and careful, his head on your shoulder, lips brushing against your neck. 

You take a ragged breath in, “Why is it *you’re* angry? Not saying you’re wrong, I just -- you know. You know how I understand him.”

The two of you have hashed it out over quiet dinners, sometimes even with Harry present. Harry always wants to apologize, and you’ve almost glared him out of the habit. That man died. You regret the fact that you wanted to mourn him. Had to, even. 

You pull back to look him in the eye. No stopping now, “I want to know what you’re thinking about, when you think about him -- before.”

He nods, stepping away from you for a moment. His dark eyes narrow as he turns it over. A car streaks past you in the distance, headlights vanishing from the city into the unrelenting darkness of the road. You shiver in the breeze. 

“I think of -- and this is unfair. I realize this. But it’s easy to think of the ways you should have been protected. Everyone around you, they -- kept you where you were.”

You cut in a little too fast there, rigid and insistent, “I made sure of it. I didn’t know any better, but fuck, it was my decision.”

He purses his lips tightly. You take his hand, half by way of apology. He sighs, “I know. I said I was being unfair to you.”

“You wish you were there?”

He tilts his head up, studying the shimmering colors of the city in the distance for a moment, “Maybe this isn’t about Harry. Or even about you.”

“...shit like this, probably true, yeah.”

“There was someone I slept with. Someone I -- loved, who hurt me and left me in a way that made me feel profoundly stupid. Like I’d -- allowed that.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think about him much anymore. But yes. I tried to give him what I thought he needed, and he took, and took, and hurt me, and vanished in the most selfish way I could possibly imagine,” Kim’s voice is flat-- it’s vague, it’s difficult for him. But there’s an ease that finally unknits his brow as he continues. 

“I don’t want to make you feel like you need to allow that again, and I don’t want to be part of -- that happening to you again.”

“Even though you know he’s a different man,” you’re not entirely sure if you’re talking about the shitkid, or whoever the son of a bitch who hurt Kim that bad was. You reach for the bloodied scab on your cheek, barely thinking about it. 

He catches your hand before you scrape it raw again. “I do. I only knew him as -- the Harry we love.”

“Four letter words, Kits,” you take his cue, brushing your hand down his face with tenderness. Feels better than ravaging your own. 

“Yes. We’re speaking with bare knuckles tonight, aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” you let the backs of your fingers linger on his neck, feeling his breath move against his pulse. This used to be so much harder, hell -- it’s still not easy -- 

But you think there might be something you can understand here. 

“I know you fight being angry. For my sake and his.”

“I do.”

“But short of -- I dunno, also saying the thought of you being with someone who fucked you over that bad makes me angry too. It’s… this shitty little fantasy where I could have protected you.”

“Yes. yes that’s -- it exactly.”

He settles back against the Kineema, his warmth pressed against the side of your body as you both let the words settle. You consider lighting another cigarette, but you don’t want to rake over his self-control more than you already have. You cast a level gaze back to the city. There’s still something you have to say. 

“Kits, you -- couldn’t have protected me. No one at the 41st could and they did the best they could with who I was. With who Harry was.”

When he looks at you, for a brief moment his measured calm cracks, “What -- why did you -- why do you owe yourself to him -- to that man so completely? He would have destroyed you.”  
  
“He did. Yeah. and his own damn self with it. I can’t say I miss it. But hell, there were all these little things that kept me there. Still do. I would have fought tooth and nail with anyone who tried to get me to leave him,” the words almost feel raw in your throat. As angry as you were with him, some days -- it never was enough to make you leave. Martinaise was as close as you ever got. And still, that felt more for ...everyone there. Or that's what it's easier to say it was. 

“You wouldn’t have known how I could try. I can be very persuasive.”

The smile comes to your lips easily, in spite of yourself “I know it.”

He sighs, taking off his glasses to clean with his handkerchief. Little rituals. Your fingers itch in the absence of a cigarette. You resist the urge to reach for the scab on your cheek, grounding yourself on the cool metal of the car. 

“Still. That -- was never an option for us. I wasn’t there then. We have what it is we have now,” he murmurs, almost to himself. 

You glance at him sidelong, “Feels like I got to hear that exactly as you thought it.”

“You did. Thank you. Thank you.”

You consider brushing it off, but leave it there. Heading off apologies means taking gratitude when you can. Whether you feel you deserve it or not. You let your glance sift over the sky again, the breath in your lungs warm and well-settled at last. 

He follows your gaze, then points at a W-shaped pattern close to the horizon, “Aetheia, the Queen. That’s the only one I remember.” 

“You think Harry remembers any constellations?” all this talk about the shitkid -- now you’re thinking about him. Alone and hopefully asleep, maybe at the apartment. You doubt he’s at yours. 

“Probably somewhere in that encyclopedia of his, yes,” Kim replies dryly. 

“Heh. Yeah. Maybe sometime we’ll be out here together,” you say offhand, but it does stick in your mind that this might be something just for the two of you. It’s for Kim first, of course, but “For now, it’s a nice change not to worry. As much, that is. You good to head back?”

“Yes,” he brushes a fleck of dried blood from your cheek, leans in to kiss you thoroughly, “You’re remarkable.”

“I learn from the best.”

The stars glint in his dark eyes as he looks back at you, fond, challenging, all _presence_ against the lingering glow of the city’s edge, “Hmm. We do from each other.”

**Author's Note:**

> Small worldbuilding;
> 
> The Belven Hour -- the witching hour. I like the thought of there being a few Elysium-centric names for it.
> 
> The remark about the way Kim sees is partially due to Morgue's headcanon that Kim has astigmatism, and therefore sometimes sees 'halos' at a distance despite being far-sighted. I love that headcanon, let it be fanon please :) 
> 
> Ovre’s Huntsman - Orion. I mostly picked constellations I know quite well. I don't think either of them are super versed in how to spot them, but there's some easy ones. 
> 
> The little story Kim almost tells about his ex...I was thinking of Deni, in another fic I wrote, "a tout pourquoi il y a un parce que". You can throw in your favourite "bad ex" story for Kim though if you like :) 
> 
> Honestly love the phrase "speaking with bare knuckles" as a Revachol saying; and if you liked it too feel free to put it in another fic as fanon heh. 
> 
> Aetheia, the Queen - Cassiopeia. 
> 
> I love these two so much and how much they try for each other. As always, comments and kudos are loved and appreciated.


End file.
